The CTO will decide the Hololens/Magic Leap Spatial Computing battle

First, you gotta go back to 1993. That's when Visual Basic arrived on the market and took the enterprise world by storm. I worked at a small programming magazine back then called "BasicPro" and was something like the sixth employee there. That company, because of the popularity of Visual Basic, went to somewhere around 200 employees after it changed the main magazine's name to "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal."

It was there that I met many people who, today, run important companies, or technologies. Don Box, for instance, was our top speaker. He now runs mixed reality tech at Microsoft. Aaron Skonnard was another top speaker. He now runs Pluralsight. Deborah Kurata often won our best keynote awards and is still a very in-demand speaker and developer. Carl Franklin was the first to show our audience the Internet, way back in 94, and he still runs an influential development company and podcast today. Many of our former speakers, writers, and attendees are now CTOs or important developers across the industry.

Which brings us to today.

A few sources, who have seen early prototypes of the Hololens v.next spatial computing glasses (Microsoft calls it mixed reality), tell me that the Hololens release that will be in 10 days is far more important than most people are expecting. One, when I asked "should I buy a Magic Leap or a new Hololens?" answered "well, do you want a fun toy or do you want to do real work on real systems?"

Ahh, the lockin of Windows. It is still there.

See, if you go to some place like Hertz rental car, take a look at the screens that run the systems. They are custom software running on Windows. Might even be some Visual Basic code in there, although for a system that big it probably was written in Visual Studio/C++ or C# (which, funny enough, is the language Unity uses underneath almost all of the virtual reality stuff that I play with on my Oculus or Vive, but that's another story for another day).

The truth is some CTO somewhere has invested millions of dollars in custom software, all running on Windows.

So, what will happen if some consultant, like the firm that I'm working for, more on that on March 4th at Infinite Retina, tells that CTO to buy a Magic Leap to build the future of rental cars we'll be laughed out of the room.

Bill Gates knew this, which is why he has overindexed on backward compatibility for so long. The joke used to be "Windows isn't done until it will run the oldest copy of Lotus 123." Yeah, that no longer works, but you can bet that all the custom software that's been built for modern enterprises will run on the new Hololens.

For the last few years Microsofties have been telling me "sorry, we're only for enterprises for the next few years." They still say that. Why? Even the new Hololens still will be too expensive for consumers, and getting people to give up their phones for an entirely new device that costs $1,500 to $3,000? No chance in hell.

But those CTOs? If they want to give their factory workers a new way to compute without having to sit down at a desk? HoloLens makes a ton of sense. Especially one with a much better 3D sensor, much better optic, and a new AI chip that will let him or her modernize their factory floor and build new apps.

Think about an architect? They are using Autodesk's software. Will it run on Magic Leap? Nope. But it'll run on Hololens out of the box.

What about a hospital? All the Windows software that runs a modern hospital and all the devices inside will run just fine.

Airport? Have you ever seen a blue screen on an airport sign? I have. It means Windows is running underneath. Hololens will work just fine.

Shall I go on?

Anyway, watch what happens with device sales over the next few months. My partners and I predict Microsoft will see many new apps delivered for Hololens. We're keeping track of both Hololens and Magic Leap-focused developers and apps over on Twitter, where we've built 40+ lists of the industry: https://twitter.com/InfiniteRetina/lists

Enterprise will rule the day and my prediction is Hololens will rule the enterprise for at least 24 months.

The problem for Microsoft is whether or not it'll learn from the mistakes made when it stayed enterprise for too long when it came to the phone. Back when I worked at Microsoft I asked the phone team what its strategy was. It answered "sell to the enterprise because that's where the money is." They were right back then, in a world of Blackberries which ruled the enterprise the way I'm expecting Hololens will for the next two years. But then came Apple, which didn't sell to the CTO (in fact, most CTOs I knew hated them because of just what I laid out in this post -- iPhones didn't run their custom software) but, rather, sold to consumers who brought them to work and forced the CTO to support them.

Watch for Apple to let Microsoft and Magic Leap have some fun in the marketplace for one to four years, then enter and do the same thing all over again.

The question I have for the Hololens team (hi Alex Kipman): when will you join back up with Xbox and do a series of devices that is attractive to both CTOs and my kids? If you do that then Apple and Tim Cook really has something to worry about.

Anyway, I'll be paying attention to Microsoft on February 24th when it announces the new Hololens. You should too.

Oh, and should I remind everyone that the Army bought half a billion worth of Hololens vs. Magic Leap for just these issues? The CTO is in charge, even in the military.